Ott Tänak won Wednesday night's superspecial with Sébastien Ogier second
Photography by Hyundai
Words by Luke Barry
Ott Tänak leads Rally Saudi Arabia after Wednesday’s superspecial, as Sébastien Ogier beat World Rally Championship title rival Elfyn Evans in their head-to-head.
The Jameel Motorsport Super Special was nothing but a warm-up for the rough and rocky stages that are to follow throughout the weekend, but the Rally1 field was still spread by 17.6s.
Tänak’s Hyundai was the quickest around the man-made test, 1.2s up on Ogier with Mãrtiņš Sesks an impressive third for M-Sport. Thierry Neuville (+2.0s) and Elfyn Evans (+2.1s) rounded out the top-five.
“Not sure about performance, hopefully the reliability is a bit better than it has been this year,” Tänak said. “It’s a proper test for that, let’s find out. We just need to go for it.”
Ogier meanwhile batted off any suggestion that his victory over Evans was an important psychological marker.
“We are grown up enough to know that only tomorrow the real [rally] starts,” he said. “Here you can only lose the rally, you cannot win it.
Evans, who is chasing his first WRC title, added: “Getting to the end will be one [thing] here, that’s already a challenge. But we’re going to have to drive with our heads this weekend, let’s see how it all unfolds. We’ll be giving it the best we can.”
Kalle Rovanperä is the other driver capable of becoming world champion on Saturday, but he described his driving as “disgusting” to go sixth fastest on SS1, 2.5s off the pace.
“This one was pretty disgusting driving wise,” he said, “crazy amount of understeer and felt just horrible all the time. Let’s hope tomorrow on gravel it’s better.
Sami Pajari and Adrien Fourmaux have eyes on each other this weekend, with Fourmaux just two points ahead of Pajari in the championship.
Competing side-by-side on the superspecial, Pajari laughed: “We were joking we are now deciding the start position for Monte Carlo.”
The Finn was 0.1s shy of Rovanperä but 0.3s quicker than the Frenchman to hold seventh place; Fourmaux was eighth.
M-Sport team-mates Grégoire Munster and Josh McErlean went head-to-head in their Puma Rally1s; Munster emerging the winner by 0.8s.
“We actually had a bet that the guy who was fastest on the superspecial tonight can clock in early and use the flexi [service], so I had to win it,” Munster said.
But McErlean denied the bet’s existence: “First I’ve heard of the bet!” he retorted. “It’s like dancing, and I’m not that good at dancing to try and find a rhythm in there.”
They are 10th and 11th overnight, ahead of Nasser Al-Attiyah whose first WRC start in 10 years didn’t start well – literally. The Dacia W2RC driver completely misjudged the start to immediately incur a 10s penalty for a false start.
Al-Attiyah grinned: “When I saw green I was launching, but OK it was a good stage. Tomorrow will be another day.”
Oliver Solberg got away with a “small kiss” off the barrier to set the quickest Rally2 time, but Nikolay Gryazin leads WRC2 overnight with fellow Škoda drivers Robert Virves and Gus Greensmith sharing second place.
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Rally Saudi Arabia, Rally Saudi Arabia 2025, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date November 26, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/11/H2hYU5ua-2025SAUDI_RT_051-780x520.jpg November 26, 2025
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